Hollis Taggart Galleries was founded in 1979 with a mission of presenting museum-quality works of art, maintaining an inventory and exhibition program motivated by scholarship, and offering personalized advising for collectors. Over the past 36 years, the gallery's program has included significant works in the American vernacular from the Hudson River School to Impressionist, Modernist, Abstract Expressionist, and Contemporary Art. Hollis Taggart Galleries has organized exhibitions curated by gallery directors in conjunction with scholars. The gallery has also collaborated with over thirty museums and institutions to produce scholarly catalogues in the field of American art.
History
Hollis Taggart established his gallery in Los Angeles in 1979. Taggart's entrée into the art world was as a collector, and he eventually turned to the gallery business after several years of art collecting while practicing law in New Orleans. He holds degrees in art history, business, and law. After four years in Hollywood, the gallery relocated to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. In 1994, Hollis Taggart Galleries expanded to a satellite location in New York'sUpper East Side. The two galleries were consolidated in 1996, following Taggart's move to Manhattan. Located on 73rd Street, the gallery maintained an in-depth and scholarly exhibition program. A series of five groundbreaking exhibitions between 1997 and 2000 explored American Modernism in a considered and perceptive fashion that spearheaded the sort of scholarly exhibitions that are now common. These focused on artists such as Alfred Henry Maurer, Arthur Beecher Carles, Manierre Dawson, and others. The first of this series, The Color of Modernism: The American Fauves, examined the American artists who studied directly under Matisse and the successive artists who adapted the Fauvist liberation of color to an American idiom. Organized by art historian William H. Gerdts, The Color of Modernism remains one of the pivotal exhibitions on the subject. From 2000 to 2006, the gallery again expanded to a second location, this time in Chicago. It was there that the gallery's program began to move more toward Abstract Expressionism and American Post War art, a direction that has continued into the present day. In 2005, Hollis Taggart Galleries moved from 73rd Street to Madison Avenue, and would reside for the next decade in sight of the landmark Marcel Breuer building that then housed the Whitney Museum of American Art. In the summer of 2015, Hollis Taggart Galleries opened a spacious 4,000-square-foot gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea gallery district. The gallery also retains a by-appointment-only townhouse gallery space on the Upper East Side. These two venues work in concert to further the gallery's aims. The gallery's current program emphasizes Post-War American art, yet continues to promote the American Modernists upon which the gallery built its reputation. The gallery also represents a select group of contemporary artists whose aesthetic is consistent with its historical vision.
Exhibitions
Scholarly research
The gallery has also been involved in several long-term scholarly projects, including the ongoing research and publication of four catalogues raisonnés. The first, published in 2006, was the two-volume catalogue raisonné of Pennsylvania Impressionist Daniel Garber, which includes over 1,000 entries. The catalogue raisonné of pioneering American modernist Manierre Dawson was published in 2011. In 2000 the gallery launched the Frederick Carl Frieseke catalogue raisonné that is currently being compiled by the artist's grandson. Most recently, Hollis Taggart Galleries has undertaken the compilation of the catalogue raisonné of Surrealist artist Kay Sage, in partnership with Mark Kelman and Sage scholar Stephen Robeson Miller.
